High-Rise ** (2015, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy) – Movie Review

Director Ben Wheatley’s ambitious but excruciating satire is on the one hand an admirable British art film but on the other hand incredibly hard to sit through. One hour is quite enough, thank you. A handful of patrons left the cinema at this point.

It proved a good moment to leave. The second hour is even more difficult to sit through. Nevertheless, High-Rise is definitely in the interesting category, even if a should-see duty film rather than a must-see.

Tom Hiddleston is excellent as the film’s main star, giving his all as physiologist- forensic pathologist Dr Robert Laing, one of the residents of the titular, and staggeringly obviously symbolic high-rise. All through the film, I kept thinking what a good James Bond Hiddleston would make. He’s lean, lithe and wiry, and gym fit, but he plays a character who comes across as sinister and untrustworthy. Ideal as a spy! And ideal as a forensic pathologist too, I suppose.

Jeremy Irons also gives his all as the Seveties high-rise’s architect Anthony Royal, but it is too much, not much too much, but too much. Less of this would be more, but at least it’s very lively. High-Rise is pretty much the Hiddleston and Irons Show, with Irons as Hiddleston’s special guest star. No one else impresses or shines. Luke Evans seems miscast as Richard Wilder, Sienna Miller is wasted and struggling as Charlotte Melville, Elisabeth Moss hasn’t much to do as Helen Wilder, and James Purefoy is thrown away as Pangbourne.

Producer Jeremy Thomas worked for decades to make this film, which was understandably once deemed ‘unfilmable’. You get the point. He bought the rights back in 1975, intending Nicolas Roeg to direct. Amy Jump’s somewhat baffling screenplay is based on J G Ballard’s 1975 novel, which feels quite dated here.

I usually take the trouble of helpfully trying to describe a movie’s plot, but there isn’t one here: it’s only a situation as life for the residents of a state-of-the-art high-rise apartment building runs out of control. Of course sex, violence and strong language follow, all of them very unattractive.

I’m not really a fan of alienating art movies, especially British ones. It’s OK if they’re French or Russian, perhaps! But there may be those who are, and this is for them, perfectly delivered in a sleek production and a slick package.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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